in the bill to enlarge the arbitrary powers of provincial governors, proposing that these officials should be the representatives not only of the government but also of the autocrat, and should therefore share his powers. The Emperor then opened the sitting with a few words to the effect that he concurred in that view. In his study he is generally busy signing replies to addresses of loyalty, or writing comments on the various reports presented by ministers, governors, and other officials. He is encouraged by his courtiers to believe that all these replies and comments are priceless; for even such trivial remarks as, 'I am very glad,' God grant it may be so,' are published in large type in the newspaper, glazed over in the manuscript, and carefully preserved in the archives like the relics of a saint. But the most interesting are never published; and of these there is a choice collection. Here is one. A report of the negotiations respecting the warship 'Manchur' was recently laid before him by Count Lamsdorff. The tenor of it was that the Chinese authorities had summoned the 'Manchur' to quit the neutral harbour of Shanghai at the repeated and urgent request of the Japanese consul there. On the margin of that report his Majesty penned the memorable words: The Japanese consul is a scoundrel.'

The Emperor imagines it to be the right and the duty of the Autocrat of All the Russias to intervene personally in every affair that interests himself or has any bearing on his mission. The instances of this uncalled-for personal action are nearly as numerous as his official acts; and the consequences of several are written in blood and fire in the history of his reign. They have undermined the sense of legality; and the end of legality is always the beginning of the reign of violence. The saddest part of the story is that, the more unsteady he becomes, the more vigorously he sweeps away the last weak barriers which stand between the autocracy and folly or injustice, such as the Council of the Empire, the Committee of Ministers, and the Senate. A few examples will enable the reader to judge for himself. The late Minister of Public Instruction, Sänger, who was not an enemy to instruction like so many of his predecessors, brought in a bill changing a preparatory grammar school in Lutzk, supported by voluntary subscriptions, into a complete one. It was a

Vol. 200.-No. 399.

useful measure; and the Council of the Empire, having taken cognisance of it, passed it unanimously. On the report, as presented to the Tsar, his Majesty wrote: 'No. I disagree entirely with the Council of the Empire. I hold that we must encourage technical and not classical education.' The bill was killed, and Sänger resigned; but neither technical nor classical education is encouraged.

The Senate, being a judicial and also an administrative institution, can pass resolutions which, if approved by the majority and not opposed by the Minister of Justice, have the force of law. But neither the Council of the Empire nor the Committee of Ministers can enact a law, because their decisions have to be referred to the Tsar, who may agree with the proposal of the majority or the protest of the minority, or ignore both and act on his own initiative. Alexander III usually took the side of the minority; and his son and successor has followed his example religiously. He has also established a practice of first approving the bill in principle and then allowing the minister to send it before the Council or the Committee, so that all the members know beforehand the opinion of the monarch. But if the majority is bold or honest enough to throw it out, the Tsar always adopts the view of the minority.

Here is an amusing case which characterises our government and our rulers. A bill was introduced to indemnify landed proprietors in the Baltic provinces for the losses they had incurred through the government monopoly of alcohol. M. de Witte held that the sum of several millions should be paid over to them in the course of a number of years; the majority maintained that it ought to be paid at once. M. de Witte first informed the Tsar of this divergence; and his Majesty promised to confirm the view of the minority. The minister then wrote a letter to the Secretary of the Council, M. de Plehve, telling him that the Emperor had promised to confirm the decision of the minority so soon as the documents were placed before him. M. de Plehve freely communicated this announcement to all the members. Then many officials, seeing that opposition would be fruitless, changed their views, or their votes, so that the minority unexpectedly became the majority. In the course of time the documents were laid before the Tsar, who remembered only that he had pledged himself to M. de Witte to

reject the proposal of the majority. Accordingly, without reading the papers or taking further thought, he redeemed his promise; and the wrong bill became law.

The course of justice, civil and criminal, is liable to be impeded in the same way. Here is an example. A certain person incurred large debts in St Petersburg, and was declared bankrupt. In the ordinary course of law his estates were to be sold and the creditors satisfied. The Tula Bank was charged with the sale of the estates; but the Tsar, having meanwhile been asked to interfere, issued an order stopping the sale and suspending the operation of the law. An action was brought against Princess Imeretinsky by her late husband's heirs. The Princess, who had powerful friends, privately petitioned his Majesty to intervene on her behalf, and her prayer was granted. The Tsar ordered the plaintiffs to be nonsuited and the action quashed; and his will was duly executed. In a third case, some noblemen sold their estates to merchants; the transactions were properly carried out and legally ratified. But the Tsar, by his own power, cancelled the deed of sale and ordered the money and the estates to be returned to their previous owners. Such instances of interference with the course of justice might easily be multiplied.

Of the course of justice in political trials little need be said. The prosecution of the murderers of the Kishineff Jews is fresh in the memory of all. An incident unparalleled in our history before the present reign rendered that trial celebrated for all time; the counsel for the prosecution in the civil case threw up their briefs and left the court because of the systematic denial of justice to their clients. When the flogging cases were heard in the Government of Poltava last year a similar course was taken by the lawyers. The rights which our laws bestow upon prisoners were so persistently denied them that the advocates of the accused peasants had no choice but to throw up their briefs and leave the court. In every political trial the Minister of Justice closes the doors; and he is prepared to do the same in any civil lawsuits if either of the parties has influence at Court. Peasant malcontents are flogged without trial or accusation; working men are shot down when parading the streets. In all this M. Muravieff, the human embodiment of

Russian law, the Minister of Justice, is the executioner of justice and the executor of unrighteousness.

Yet, undoubtedly, the power of the autocracy could be employed to further the cause of humanity, enlightenment, and justice, if such were the will of him who wields it. A single word from the Tsar would cause a profound change to come over the condition of the country and the sentiments of his people. The responsibility for his acts cannot be laid upon the shoulders of his ministers, whose advice he refrains from seeking in the most dangerous crises of his reign. It was not his ministers who prompted him to break the promise he had given to evacuate Manchuria; they entreated him to keep it. It was not they who proposed that he should curtail the power for good still left to such institutions as the Council of the Empire, the Committee of Ministers, and the governing Senate. It was not they who impelled him to make the monarchy ridiculous by seeking wisdom in the evocation of spirits and strength in the canonisation of saints. It was not they who urged him to break up the Finnish nation by a series of iniquitous measures worthy of an oriental despot of ancient Babylon or Persia; on the contrary, they assured him in clear and not always courtly phraseology that justice and statesmanship required him to stay his hand. It was not his official advisers who suggested that he should despoil the Armenian Church of its property and endowments, while leaving all other religious communities in the possession of theirs, and should punish with bullets and cold steel the zealous members of that Church who protested in the name of their religion and conscience. Almost all his ministers united for once in warning him that this was an act of wanton spoliation, and in conjuring him to abandon or modify his scheme. But, deaf to their arguments, he insisted on having his own way.

The Tsar's reign has therefore brought everything into a state of flux; nothing is stable with us as in other countries. No traditions, no rights, no laws are respected; there are only ever-increasing burdens, severer punishments, and never dwindling misery and suffering. The Tsar's meddling unsettles the whole nation and disquiets even the obscure individual, because nobody is sure that his turn will not come to-morrow. Thus, on the one

hand, a whole county council in Tver, with its members, its officials, its schools, doctors, teachers, and statisticians, was lately annihilated by a stroke of the imperial pen; while, on the other hand, a general here, a journalist there, lawyers, physicians, officials, have been seized in various parts of the country and imprisoned or banished. Under Paul I only those who were in the neighbourhood of the Emperor had reason to apprehend his outbursts of eccentricity; but Nicholas II has sent genuine pashas like Prince Galitzin and General Bobrikoff to govern the provinces; and these men are as arbitrary as himself.

What strange and unpleasant mishaps may befall private persons can be inferred from a few examples. A short time ago a journalist of the capital, who writes with considerable verve, was packed off to Siberia-not in a day or an hour, but in a twinkling. His crime? The Tsar's imagination worked upon by an over-zealous priest. One day early in 1902 M. Amphitheatroff published a moderately interesting article describing the home circle of a landed proprietor, whom he depicted as very firm and strict with his family, and so scrupulous in his dealings with the other sex that he boiled with indignation if his wife's chamber-maid flirted with any male relative or stranger. He had a sympathetic son, with eyes like a gazelle's—a well-meaning youth who wished everybody to be happy, but possessed no ideas on practical matters. The kind-hearted mother sat between father and son, tenderly loving both. It was an idyllic picture of Russian life at its best-and nothing more. The censor read it and saw nothing wrong. The minister, Sipyaghin, glanced at it and passed on cheerfully to his hot pancakes and cold caviare. The Tsar himself perused it and liked it, it was such a pleasing picture of the serene life of a Russian squire.' But the Emperor's chaplain, Yanisheff, descried high treason between the lines. According to him, the landed proprietor, who struck the table with his fist whenever he heard of a little flirtation on the part of his wife's maid, was no other than the Emperor Alexander III; the son with the sympathetic eyes and vacillating character was Nicholas II.

* Since this article was written, General Bobrikoff, Governor of Finland. was assassinated at Helsingfors, June 16,